The talent was there, painfully obvious to everybody but Joe Nathan himself. Three years ago, the Circleville, N.Y., (Hudson Valley) native was a light-hitting shortstop, struggling his way through rookie ball when the Giants told him that his future was as a pitcher, not a position player.

But he resisted all their attempts to turn him into a pitcher, and in 1996 he quit baseball entirely. He couldn’t give up the security blanket of a position he knew, and was convinced he couldn’t learn something different.

Never has he been so happy to be so wrong. Three years later, Nathan has emerged as one of the most pleasant surprises in the National League, and a godsend to the San Francisco staff.

He came into the year having never even pitched in Triple-A, but with veteran starter Mark Gardner on the DL, it’s been Nathan who’s filled the void with a 2-0 record and a 1.20 ERA going into tomorrow’s start in Pittsburgh.

“It’s exciting, especially coming here,” said Nathan, a Pine Bush High School grad who had looked forward to pitching at Shea. “(I didn’t expect it_, especially so quickly. It’s all been a little sudden. My goal this year was to get up here in September, but fortunately, it came a little quicker.”

He’s made the most of his chance. He’s been the Giants’ most reliable pitcher over the last two weeks, and even did a guest spot on WFAN Friday. And with Gardner eligible to come off the DL Monday, it may be Chris Brock who gets shoved from the rotation, not Nathan.

“Any time you lose a guy the magnitude of Mark Gardner, and call up a Joe Nathan [whom you don’t know] and get two outstanding starts, [it’s huge],” said manager Dusty Baker. “He’s a battler. He just comes and pitches.”

“He’s not intimidated by being in the big leagues, not in awe playing against guys he was watching on TV four years ago. Some have [that confidence]; some don’t. It comes from [the heart]. Nobody can give you that, and you can’t fake it; it’s gotta be real.”

He didn’t always have that confidence in his pitching ability. After the Giants drafted him out of SUNY Stony Brook as a shortstop, he hit just .232 for Bellingham in rookie ball, and the club tried to convert him into a pitcher. Light-hitting shortstops were a dime-a-dozen, they told him, but 95-mph heat is a rare thing.

He resisted, and actually left the sport altogether. He went back to SUNY and finished his degree in business management, but a year away from the sport gave him a different perspective. So in 1997 the he returned, and almost instantly showed prodigious talent.

“I enjoyed pitching, once I got out there,” Nathan admitted. “It was just about security, more than anything. I didn’t know how I’d do. It just wasn’t a good time for me, [so] I went back and finished school. But I knew in my mind [leaving] was gonna be a temporary thing. I knew I’d want to come back. I didn’t really want to give it up.”